Comments on: Did the Government Cause the Housing Bubble?

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:06:59 +0000

everything you said was hypothetical

By: Wertytairty

Wertytairty — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:19:21 +0000

Nothing seems to be easier than seeing someone whom you can help but not helping.
I suggest we start giving it a try. Give love to the ones that need it.
God will appreciate it.

By: Blame It on the Fed « Vox Nova

Blame It on the Fed « Vox Nova — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:30:55 +0000

[...] the popular press. There have been plenty of attempts to prove that some government action, such as the CRA or the backing of Fannie and Freddie, was behind the housing bubble. But fed policy, if it’s [...]

By: Blame It on the Fed « Blackadder’s Lair

Blame It on the Fed « Blackadder’s Lair — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:27:43 +0000

By: What About Fannie and Freddie? « Blackadder’s Lair

What About Fannie and Freddie? « Blackadder’s Lair — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:25:04 +0000

[...] About Fannie and Freddie? Aside from the Community Reinvestment Act, the main culprits fingered by conservatives in their attempts to acquit the free market from [...]

By: What About Fannie and Freddie? « Vox Nova

What About Fannie and Freddie? « Vox Nova — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:24:26 +0000

[...] About Fannie and Freddie? Aside from the Community Reinvestment Act, the main culprits fingered by conservatives in their attempts to acquit the free market from [...]

By: blackadderiv

blackadderiv — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:34:08 +0000

Based on Wikipedia, it appears that the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was not publicly debated, though it was signed into law by President Clinton (the sponsor of the bill, fwiw, was Senator Luger; Gramm was a cosponsor). In any event, it's not clear to me that derivatives really were what's to blame for current troubles. Robert Shiller, at least, thinks not. Nor is it clear, even to the extent that they were a problem, that congress can be held responsible for not second-guessing the mathematical models developed to calculate risk. That, I think, would be asking too much of mere mortals.

By: S.B.

S.B. — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:46:30 +0000

There’s ideology on all sides . . . some conservatives have the instinct to blame government and excuse the private market, and some liberals (e.g., MM) have the instinct to blame the market and exonerate anything that government ever did. Perhaps if one takes the average of those ideological beliefs, it would be a closer approximation to the truth.

By the way, this is highly misleading:

While the country was transfixed by the Bush-Gore election nightmare in December 2000, Phil Gramm slipped the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into an appropriations bill with the support of a GOP-controlled Congress.

That particular act was not “slipped” into anything, which implies some sort of secrecy. It was publicly debated and then strongly supported by Democrats.

By: blackadderiv

blackadderiv — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:34:13 +0000

Why do you “sympathize with folks who want to find a government scapegoat”?

I’m a sympathetic kind of guy.

By: Morning's Minion

Morning's Minion — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:23:06 +0000

Why do you “sympathize with folks who want to find a government scapegoat”? Why does your ideology automatically presuppose the goverrnment is responsible, and refuse to blame the private banking and quasi-banking system? “Good economics” first and foremost faces the facts.

By: Daniel H. Conway

Daniel H. Conway — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:58:44 +0000

What does this scapegoating say about the people who are using it? Or. more directly, why is it “the minorities, the poor did it” coming from people who can’t really afford to have such fallacies be part of their image again?

Or is it ok that scapegoating these folks are part of the image of conservative commentators, and then what does this say about their audience?

These are the points to ponder.

By: Liam

Liam — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:52:00 +0000

It also utterly fails to include the chief villain in the financial panic – the development, marketing and non-regulation of a novel way to securitize default risk (as opposed to securitizing interest rate risk, which was a development of a prior generation): credit default swaps. CDSs were not a creature of Congress. investment banks had to hire outside mathematical geniuses to create (flawed) models to do this. The fundamental problem with these instruments is that we learned the hard way) that they cannot effectively model valuation in a panicked market for the non-commoditized collateral underlying them.

Oh, Congress did have one role in this. While the country was transfixed by the Bush-Gore election nightmare in December 2000, Phil Gramm slipped the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into an appropriations bill with the support of a GOP-controlled Congress. That prevented the regulation of CDSs, among other things.